HYDERABAD: Hyderabad-based vaccine maker Bharat Biotech announced on Wednesday that its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, had been successfully airlifted to 11 cities in the country in the early hours of Wednesday.
Bharat Biotech also said that it donated 16.5 lakh doses to the Indian government.
In a media release on Wednesday, the company said, "After having received the government purchase order for 55 lakh doses, Bharat Biotech shipped the first batch of vaccines (each vial containing 20 doses) to Ganavaram, Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bangalore, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai and Lucknow." More shipments are expected to take place later in the day.
However the company did not give any break-up of how many vaccine vials were shipped to each city. It also did not give any data on how many vials would be given to Telangana, where the company is based and its manufacturing unit is located.
Bharat Biotech said in its press release, "The evaluation of Covaxin has resulted in several unique product characteristics including long term persistence of immune responses to multiple viral proteins, as opposed to only the spike protein, and has demonstrated broad spectrum neutralizing capability with heterologous SARS-CoV-2 strains, thus potentially reducing or eliminating escape mutants."
It further said, "This vaccine has also shown to generate memory T cell responses, for its multiple epitopes, indicating longevity and a rapid antibody response to future infections. Its most critical characteristic is the demonstrated safety profile, which is significantly lower than several other vaccines with published data. Covaxin is presented in multi dose vials, can be stored at 2-8 degrees C."
Covaxin is currently undergoing phase-III clinical trials.